Some will find this artcle dry, and for good reasons.

Hindu traditions consider the soul to be the unchanging eternal essence of all living beings. All souls journey through reincarnations until they attain the Supersoul, their ultimate Source. In contrast Buddhism posits the cycle of reincarnation as the soul's journey until it disintergrate into absolute vacuity. Nirvana is not mere emptiness, it is not nothingness. It is disappearence of the self-identity that had the caused endless suffering in the cycle of birth and death.

Some equate the soul's disintegration as "spiritual suicide". To counter this view, a colorful metaphore has been used that compares Enlightement to the state of someone who, after hitting themselves hard on the head repeatedly, simply stops hitting. The relief resulting from such cessation (human suffering) could be a definition of Buddhist "Enlightenment." Relief is not bliss, however, any more than peace does not in itself amounts to Joy. Finally, while the metaphore would suggest It is anyone's guess whether such a state has any bliss in it, b in as much as there is no one there to experience the bliss.

Hindu Monism is the closest equivalent to the Buddhist Vacuity (Nirvana). The big difference between Monism and Nirvana is that the former is Absolute Fullness, the latter Absolute vacuity. Both conceptions, however reject the individual self. Both insist that all things in existence are essentially one with the whole. Monism is the opposite of dualism, which holds that there is a fundamental difference between the Source and its Creation. God and the world are absolutely One in Hindu Monism. while all things are One in Buddhist Nirvana. The sanskrit "Nir" means "no", or "absence of" and "vana" means "forest

While both arose partially as a reaction against the metaphysical excesses of the philosophical schools, Zen focused on awakening through monastic practice, while Pure Land focused on attaining birth in the Pure Land of the Buddha Amitabha through practices that were accessible to lay people.